Nylon Calculus: Previewing the 2018 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
Earlier this week, The Ringer’s Bill Simmons posted a July 2017 podcast with Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey to commemorate the 12-year run of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. The wide-ranging interview served as a great preface to the upcoming data extravaganza. Although it was recorded before James Harden and Chris Paul stepped on the court as teammates, it covered many of the topics that ultimately landed on the conference agenda — perhaps apropos in light of Morey’s influence on both the event and the industry.
“Correction” was a term that featured prominently in the podcast. Morey relied on economic parlance to describe what happens in the competitive NBA ecosystem whenever a team exploits a market inefficiency and the rest of the league eventually follows suit. He also cited examples when teams “overcorrected,” or went so far to pursue an advantage that the costs exceeded the benefits. He painted a picture of a dynamic landscape; in many ways, every front office’s job is to establish processes that allow it to make big bets when the time, place and conditions are optimal — and to exercise enough discipline to withdraw when the opportunity has passed.
The line between optimization and excess seems likely to come up in “Inventing Modern Basketball” and, perhaps more specifically, “Take That for Data: Basketball Analytics.” Moderated by ESPN’s Zach Lowe and headlined by Morey, Jalen Rose, Nick Wright and Mike Zarren, this latter panel focuses on major analytically driven issues in the NBA, including the “exponential growth in 3-point attempts.” The Rockets enter the final stretch of the season with over half of their shots coming from downtown. That’s more than 10 percentage points higher than the second-ranking Brooklyn Nets and roughly 17 percentage points above league average — historically notable marks. Is Houston at the breaking point?
I pose this question somewhat rhetorically, but the issue is all too real for teams. As Justin Willard demonstrated in November, the identification of the “upper limit” is an extremely complicated analytical endeavor. Now imagine having to evaluate, recruit, sign, develop and coach a roster of players built for perimeter shooting, with the end of the 3-point era potentially looming over the horizon, and we can see how opportunism might rapidly devolve into overcorrection and leave certain franchises entrapped.
Timing is a crucial part of roster construction. This theme is evident in “Trust the Process? Team Building and Rebuilding in the NBA,” a panel that features former Philadelphia 76ers GM Sam Hinkie and explores “how organizations balance short-term success with a longer-term vision.” It pairs well with “Put a Ring on It: Building a Champion,” which examines “the challenges of building a consistent winner and the culture to match….”
In Morey’s case, these ideas come together to form a nuanced perspective on team chemistry. As he told Simmons, during the early stages of a rebuild, when a team is poised to win very few games in the first place, the importance of chemistry is limited (the acquisition of talent is presumably the priority). A serious contender, on the other hand, has a different calculation. With an established group of players in their primes, the relative value of chemistry increases. You need your stars and key contributors to work together optimally, and you might be more willing to pay above-market rates for an otherwise mediocre talent if he can function as the “glue guy” who fits perfectly in the system. Overall, chemistry matters, but how much emphasis you put on it depends on the circumstances.
Morey has a similarly nuanced view on the state of draft analytics, suggesting to Simmons in passing that an overcorrection may be at play. Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project gives us a glimpse into Morey’s thinking here. While draft models based predominantly on pre-NBA performance data have their place, they are limited in the evaluation of raw physical tools and other attributes. The idea then is to incorporate insights from scouts that are rigorously derived and systematically collected. This combination appears to be the main thrust behind the “Draft Day Analytics” panel, which promises to cover everything from the European professional leagues to pre-draft workouts.
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More broadly, both the Morey-Simmons podcast and the SSAC agenda dedicate some time to potential rule changes that could shake up the league. The “NBA 2.0” panel comes at the heels of commissioner Adam Silver’s announcement that a switch from conference-based to top-16 playoff seedings has garnered “serious consideration.” LeBron James has publicly voiced his disagreement with the proposal. Given the media attention surrounding it, I suspect that panel moderator Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN will broach the subject. After all, it seems to be in keeping with the conference tagline: “Talk Data to Me.”